This might be the coolest film ever made, in the most literal sense of
the term. The men here never lose control and never - not once - show
their emotions. No dramatic outbursts in this film. Everyone is cool
all the time. It's an abstract dream-world, where the men live by their
own code, a gangster code with the values of the outside world
conspicuously absent. In this masterfully filmed heist saga, Melville
tackles the American crime thriller in his distinctly dark and desolate
style, yet made in grand fashion with a hefty budget of ten million
dollars and with four of the greatest French stars at the time. Alain
Delon as the master thief, Yves Montand as an alcoholic ex-cop, Italian
star Gian-Maria Volonté as an escaped criminal and André Bourvil in an
atypical role as the cynical police chief.

Melville described LE CERCLE ROUGE as his penultimate film and it is
indeed a masterfully stylized policier. He also claimed he wanted to
shoot a film noir in colour and in many ways he succeeded. The two
primary influences for this film were John Huston's 1950 heist movie
THE ASPHALT JUNGLE and Jules Dassin's RIFIFI (1955). But unlike these
films, where we learn much about the background of the individual gang
members, with all their petty needs and worries that motivate them,
making clear these are not just ruthless underworld types, but ordinary
individuals engaged in a world of everyday worries and human endeavour,
Melville, though, tells us almost nothing about his criminals. Why was
Corey (Alain Delon) in jail? Why was his associate, Vogel (Jean-Marie
Volonté) arrested in the first place? Or why the ex-police marksman
Jansen (Yves Montand) left the force, was it his alcoholism? We never
learn the motivations behind their actions and never find out what
drives these men. Women are even more absent than in his earlier films,
with the "emotional" ties exclusively between men. They don't even seem
to have personal lives. A sort of an emotional twilight zone and
although the setting is not as abstract as in his earlier LE SAMOURAI
(1967), Melville still sketches a very eerie world. Melville's favorite
actor, Alain Delon, is perfect and almost outdoes himself in coolness,
if imaginable.

Deliberately paced and with a length of over 140 minutes, Melville
takes his time to tell the story, but its slow pace and length seems a
perfect way to show the desolate world these men live in. Nothing is
ever out of place in Melville's films and here it's no different, every
little detail seemingly of pivotal importance for the story. Although
LE SAMOURAI remains my favorite Melville film, even up there with the
greatest films ever made, this one also belongs to the very best.

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